Preview

Maya Angelou 5

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1248 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Maya Angelou 5
Maya Angelou is a phenomenal woman. She was born into a devastating decade, that suffered numerous tragedies. Not only had society shaped her as a woman, she has also shaped our society and influenced many lives. She is still living today, yet I believe her legend will never die. Furthermore I will share with you what motivated her and some of her gratifying experiences. How she was effected by society, and what she did about it. Also how the time period she was born into made her the extraordinary woman she is today. Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, a year before the crash of 29 (the stock market crash). To get a sense of what exactly Maya was born into, I will explain what exactly this meant. This was the start of the depression, a nation wide economic tragedy that lasted until the late 1930’s. The effects varied, but everyone suffered. By 1933, nearly one quarter of the workforce had been laid off. By 1934, two fifths of home owners lost their houses, and New York listed 100 deaths from starvation. About 37% of American had irregular eating habits, and generally did not get three meals a day. Only about 8% were getting only one meal a day, and this was not stolid food. Day after day, people lived off of bread, potatoes, macaroni, spaghetti, canned soups and thin gravy. Meat and vegetables were rarely served. A common response, often heard, when children were asked if they had eaten today was “No, this is my sisters’ day to eat.” In 1937 the Ohio river burst it’s banks and killed over 250 people and ruined many livelihoods. Between 1933 and 1934 huge dust storms swept through country after country picking up tons of patched soil, 514,000 farm workers lost there jobs because of this. Stamps, Arkansas slowly came into the depression, and slowly came out of it. They did not even know of the depression until the early 30’s Maya Angelou born April 4, 1928, was born in St. Louis, MO. She was born as Marguerite, but

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    "Maya Angelou - Biography." Maya Angelou - Biography. Web. 10 July 2014. This source gives a small, but great biography of Maya Angelou's life. It begins with her childhood , and extends a bit into her adult life. It touches on some of her struggles, places she's lived and traveled to, and what she has accomplished throughout her lifetime. She was a poet, memoirist, film maker, actress, producer, historian, educator and most importantly, a civil rights activist.…

    • 1129 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maya Angelou’s early life helped lead to her need to accomplish her goals. For example, Marguerite Anne Johnson was born April 14, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents sent her and her brother away to live with their grandma in Stamps, Arkansas after they got divorced (Kite 6-7). Secondly, during…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maya Angelou books and poems relate to real world situations. In her poem phenomenal women it talks about how you should not live in a stereotypical way of life and have confidence in yourself. You should celebrate how remarkable you are and it makes you a champion. Being a woman makes you supreme, because women are a mystery and hard to figure out. She expresses you don’t need to be loud to get attention just being yourself shows who you are. Maya Angelo works states you should embrace your purpose, practice a self-confidence ritual, and enjoy spending time alone, refuse to buy into the media’s image of a perfect woman, refuse to take anything too personally, ask empowering questions, and ask what they can do to improve the world. Her story…

    • 287 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    ''When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time'' says marguerite Annie Johnson also known as Maya Angelou. Known for her inspiring appearances as an author, screen writer, dancer, actress and of course a poet. There were many ways Maya was born in St. Louis Missouri in 1928. She experienced racial prejudices and discrimination after moving with her grandmother when her parents split. She experienced harsh events in her life that made her the strong woman she is that led her on till her death in 2014. The spirit in her work still lives on today by those who admire her work. Using her biography as a resource, Her parents split when Maya was just a very young girl. Not only did she get raped as a child by her mother's boyfriend, She also got pregnant at the early age of 16 in a short high school relationship that left her with a handsome boy named Guy Johnson. Maya's importance was based on her 1969 memoir ''I know why the caged birds sing.'' Maya's life experiences are revealed in her work continuously. Throughout her poems of ''Phenomenal woman'', ''Touched by an Angel'', and ''Harlem Hopscotch'' her poetic language is shaped by her experiences.…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Maya Angelou

    • 1228 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd Ed.) Her parents divorced when she was 3, she then lived with her mother. (Shaw, Taylor) At age 8 her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman, raped her. Angelou hid her dirty underwear under the couch, where her mother found it and discovered she had been raped. Mr. Freeman was convicted and sent to jail. When he was released he was beaten to death. (Cuffie, Terrasita) Angelou thought it was her fault that he was killed, so she didn’t speak to anyone except her brother for 6 long years. (Smelstor, Bruce) Angelou and her brother, Bailey, then moved to Stamps, Arkansas to be raised by their grandmother. She was forced to accept the ways of the Deep South. Her grandmother owned a general store and she helped Angelou develop confidence. (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd Ed.) After 8th grade Angelou moved back to California to live with her mother. She was a great student and graduated high school with honors. (Smelstor, Bruce)…

    • 1228 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson, on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. After her parents divorce in 1931, she and her brother Bailey moved to Chicago with their mother. In 1936, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend. After some hesitation, Marguerite confided in her brother and then to her mother that she had been raped. Shortly after Marguerite had to testify, but her attacker was released. Days after his release he was murdered. Convinced that the death was her fault Marguerite went through four year period where she would not speak to anyone except her brother Bailey. She and Bailey were sent to Arkansas to live with their grandmother (Maya). At the age of twelve, Marguerite started speaking again after she started the study of writing, literature, and music, she became known for her intelligence.…

    • 618 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Maya Angelou at Rutgers

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Maya Angelou was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She is a poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director. She lectures throughout the United States and abroad and is Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina since 1981. She has published ten best selling books and numerous magazine articles earning her Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations. At the request of President Clinton, she wrote and delivered a poem at his 1993 Presidential Inauguration. She also wrote and delivered a poem in 1995 titled 'A Brave and Startling Truth' in honor of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    20 Century Genius Award

    • 3437 Words
    • 14 Pages

    A brief synopsis of the life and time of Dr Maya Angelou; she was born Marguerite Johnson, April 4, 1928, in St Louis, Missouri. Her parents divorced and Maya and her older brother Bailey were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. After five years of living apart from their mother, the children returned home to St. Louis. This move took a horrific turn for the worse when Angelou, 8, was raped by her mother's boyfriend. This devastating act upon such a young girl caused her to become selctively mute for almost four years. She was sent back to Stamps to live with her Grandmother because no one could understand the state of mind that she was in. With the constant help of a school teacher named Mrs. Flowers, Angelou began to evolve into the young girl who had possessed the pride and confidence she once had.…

    • 3437 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dr. Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Baily Johnson, was a doorman, and, later a dietician for the navy. Her mother, Vivian Johnson, was a registered nurse. When Angelou was three years old, her parents were divorced. They sent her and her four-year-old brother, Baily, Jr., to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas. Henderson ran a small general store and managed to scrape by. She continued to do so after her grandchildren joined her. Angelou's grandmother was one the many strong who trained her, helped her, and provided her with role models. The people of her church also nurtured her and gave her a sense of belonging to a community. But her child hood in the south was a nightmare. In 1982, Maya Angelou told Ebony Magazine about Stamps. She said: "When I was taken to California by my grandmother, I vowed never to return to the grim, humiliating south. Except for a tentative trip to visit when I was eighteen, I didn't break my promise until I was forty years old."…

    • 1949 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” – Dr. Maya Angelou. This inspiring poet, novelist, historian, educator, actress, filmmaker, producer, memoirist, dramatist, and civil rights activist has had a superior impact on today’s American society. (A&M TV) Maya Angelou is an African American woman who went from poverty to international success. Born Marguerite Ann Johnson in Saint Louis, Arkansas to Vivian and Bailey Johnson. Her parents divorced when she was three years of age. Her and her brother, Bailey Jr., were sent to live with their grandmother in a small town called Stamps, Arkansas. Like many of the African American children that grew up in Maya’s time, she faced racial discrimination. She was always positive about it, because of the tradition old-fashion African American household she was raised in. She gives her grandmother and extended family in Stamps credit for all of the lessons and values she was taught that helped her significantly later in her adult life and while pursuing her career. Bailey and Maya were extremely close. He suffered from a bad stutter, so he could never correctly pronounce her name. He decided to call her “My” for my sister. After watching a video on the Mayan Indians, he then began to call her Maya. The name stuck. When Maya was seven years old, her and Bailey were sent to visit their mother in Chicago. Her mother’s boyfriend sexually molested her. She was too ashamed and embarrassed to inform any adults on what had happened to her, so she confided in her brother. (America Academy of Achievement) Maya’s uncle found out about what his sister’s boyfriend had done to his niece and killed her attacker. She felt that her words had killed the man, so she fell into a long phase of silence that lasted for five years. She often expressed her feelings through poetry,…

    • 706 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Phenomenal Woman is one of the most quoted poems in literary history. This poem was written in 1978 by Maya Angelou to tell a story of how as woman, through our many obstacles, we still were phenomenal. Angelou is a poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist. She was born Marguerite Johnson, April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She grew up in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. Maya Angelou’s life wasn’t always silver and gold. Maya Angelou’s parents divorced when she was a young child and her and her older brother were sent to live in Arkansas with their grandmother. At the age of seven, during a visit to her mother’s, Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. She only told her brother that this accord and days later, her mother’s boyfriend was killed by her uncles for his act on her. She thought that her words had killed him and she stopped speaking. She went on not speaking for five years and when she finally spoke, her and her brother moved back with their mom now in San Francisco. Maya earned a scholarship to the Labor School to dance and act. At the age of 16, she became pregnant and dropped out of school to work and raise her son. Angelou begin her career in a different way than most poets. She began as a dancer, then a Calypso singer and later moved to Harlem to join the Harlem Freedom Writers. In 1959, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian leadership Conference. From 1961 to 962 she was associate editor of The Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt; and from 1964 to 1966 she was feature editor of the African Review in Accra, Ghana. She returned to the U.S. in 1974 and was appointed by Gerald Ford to Bicentennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year. At the…

    • 712 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After experiencing health issues for a number of years, Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014, at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Maya Angelou had an extremely rough childhood, yet did not use that as an excuse to give up on her dreams and aspirations. She went on to become a poet, author, professor, historian, producer and civil rights leader, just to…

    • 973 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928. Maya Angelou’s full name was Marguerite Annie Johnson. Maya had an older brother name Bailey. She got raped by her mom’s boyfriend but later mom’s boyfriend got killed by her uncles. Maya Angelou won a scholarship to study dance and acting at California Labor School. Maya Angelou went to Washington High School and California Labor School.…

    • 193 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Maya Lin

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Maya Lin was born on October 5, 1959 in Athens, Ohio. Her parents, both taught at Ohio University, her mom, Julia Lin, was a poet and her dad, Henry Lin, was a ceramist. They had fled China in 1949 right before the Communist Revolution. She also had an older brother Tan, who was also a poet. Growing up Lin enjoyed reading and building miniature towns, she also excelled in mathematics. She didn 't have many friends, and enjoyed staying at home and studying over going out with friends. In high school she lived what would seem like a pretty normal life, taking advanced classes in school and working a McDonald 's for extra money.…

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays